miCRo: “The Friar, as We Know Him” by Elias Hutchinson
In this poem’s world, which is, of course, our world, it’s the people swiping Game Boys from shipping containers who are struggling to survive.
miCRo: “Prairie” by Kirun Kapur
In “Prairie,” Kirun Kapur blends memory, landscape, and elegiac praise.
miCRo: “When I Am 317 Pounds My Friends Do Not Wait for Me to Catch up to Them on a Sidewalk” by Sarah Carson
In Sarah Carson’s prose poem, the act of waiting for someone resonates in the contexts of sizeism, empathy, and human relationships.
miCRo: “Aubade in a little ice age” by Sydney Goggins
Language and climate ebb and shift in Sydney Goggins’s “Aubade in a little ice age.”
miCRo: “About” by Mia Kang
In Mia Kang’s “About,” the stuff of writing is simultaneously texture, obstacle, and process.
miCRo: “Thirty-Five-Year-Old Man Shares Joint near Harbor of Gay Resort Town” by John Bonanni
In “Thirty-Five-Year-Old Man Shares Joint near Harbor of Gay Resort Town,” John Bonanni brings to vivid, queasy life the discomfort of loving a place you know well but don’t belong to—the discomfort of the ethical vacationer.
miCRo: “Incongruous States of Dress” by Emilee Prado
Touching becomes steam, wax, and citrus in Emilee Prado’s “Incongruous States of Dress.”
miCRo: “Poem as Manananggal Always Looking for the Moon” by Albert Abonado
In Albert Abonado’s “Poem as Manananggal Always Looking for the Moon,” the mythical creature is reimagined as a poem that “arrives at night / its lower half hidden // on an empty school bus / or perhaps a sinkhole // the city ignored despite the petitions.”
miCRo: “Dyke Litany” by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers
In Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers’s “Dyke Litany,” queer adolescent isolation transforms into a collective experience.
miCRo: “Steel beneath Your Chin” by Christopher Notarnicola
Time slows, and space contracts to the tip of a knife in Christopher Notarnicola’s fraught examination of authority, order, and dignity.
miCRo: “What Don’t Kill You” by Darius Simpson
At the beginning of Darius Simpson’s “What Don’t Kill You” is a heartbreaking pair of shoes in Akron, Ohio.
miCRo: “Trespassing” by Jaclyn Gilbert
The notion of trespass becomes seductive in Jaclyn Gilbert’s story “Trespassing.”
